Raila Odinga got brush to paint 2017 signpost
By Kipkoech Tanui Updated Thursday, July 17th 2014 at 22:51 GMT +3
Saba Saba rally came and went and so we must ask ourselves what the hullaballoo was all about. We must bear in mind the fact that politics is made up of processes knitted together by the actors, not a one-off event.
Let us first go to Raila Odinga and his Coalition for Reforms and Democracy brigade that includes in its top ranks former Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka, a man struggling so hard to fit into the shoes of a political rebel. He enrolled in Standard One class of political dissent in 2002, after former President Moi apparently sidestepped him and picked Uhuru Kenyatta as his preferred successor.
Like Raila who had folded up his National Development Party to join Kanu, Mr Musyoka wouldn't understand why that was the case. Also disgruntled by Moi's decision were another two former Vice Presidents: the late George Saitoti and Musalia Mudavadi, who only served for three months and has never found his political footing since then, except for the short stint in the top echelons of the Kibaki-Raila coalition.
Apart from Raila and Kalonzo in CORD, there is also Moses Wetangula, the guy who having been Foreign minister in the second Kibaki administration, is allowed to have nightmares because of that disturbing fragrance from some parcel of land Kenya bought in Tokyo for its embassy at a cost that has baffled valuers. You see he pleaded innocent, he had to step aside from government, and his juniors are now in court, including some haughty and hawkish chap who used to sing political lullabies for Kibaki in his troubled days.
Raila promised a storm ahead of the July 7 rally if President Kenyatta did not accede to his demand for a 'structured' national dialogue. Uhuru at first accepted, then his Deputy William Ruto frowned on the idea, and he changed his mind, even trivializing it by saying Mr odinga could go and meet him over a cup of tea.
When a panicky Executive finally bared its fangs, unleashing the security machinery as if a coup was imminent, and closed the ears to calls for dialogue, Raila's team mounted the podium in Uhuru Park and declared the next step: a million signatures to force a referendum. The referendum's main agenda, if CORD gets its way, is the disbandment of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission. Whether it can muster the confidence of majority of Kenyans to not only hold, but deliver a credible election. The ruling Jubilee coalition ruined IEBC's prospects on this by defending it against the CORD onslaught. You can imagine what would happen if the football team you are going to play against, cheers and ululates at the entry of a particular referee into the field just before the first whistle goes off.
Mr Odinga in my understanding wasn't going to drop a bombshell on Saba Saba Day, or even announce a march to State House because the blood of the protestors would forever drip from his hands and neuter him politically. No, he was just laying the ground for the 2017 General Election and putting on the national agenda for the intervening period the issue of IEBC, which no matter what, the country will have to confront before then or we shall begin hearing the famous; No Reforms, No elections chorus like in 1997!
The only thing Mr Odinga did was to raise the expectation in CORD too high up, and heighten the anxiety in Jubilee.
But as we asked earlier, it is debatable if he will be able to keep CORD's troops together till 2017 and even win more, because the next election will as all the others, have new alliances and political coalescing, with the centre pole of each being tribe.
We also wondered and we still do, for how long Mr Odinga would keep the President and Mr Ruto on the edge of the their seats without hitting back Kanu style. I am sure you have heard about claims of arrests targeting CORD.
President Kenyatta and Ruto must have breathed a sigh of relief after July 7, because it was, most likely in their thinking, the case of Mark Twain's chicken that imagines it was laying a meteorite only to discover it was just a tiny egg.
Whichever way President Kenyatta and Mr Ruto look at it, I have this discomforting feeling that we have not seen the end of the confrontation yet; it has just started and what we are seeing are the rehearsals. President Kenyatta and Ruto, and I may be wrong on this, must be counting on the fact that they inherited a wobbling economy, soaring insecurity, unbearable public wage bill...and overwhelming public support.
Yes, they are right, but then once in a hole you don't continue digging, through watering the old oak of tribalism and corruption in Government, or even getting a disorganised and inexperienced team, which talks to each other at cross-purpose, to deal with your problems. Kenyans are not blaming President Kenyatta and Mr Ruto for some of these things, except of course the share of Government pie.
So what has Mr Odinga and his team achieved? Keeping President Kenyatta and Mr Ruto too busy fighting fires, to the extent of almost using bare hands, on a daily basis. As to whether Mr Odinga should stop doing this, what can we say? He is already doing it anyway. And in any case, President Kenyatta and Mr Ruto are responding to the chorus of his political songs albeit in different orchestras and musical notes.
Democracy is two Wolves and a Lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed Lamb contesting the results.
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